3 with Detroit ties face charges

Police won’t say there’s a Detroit connection to some of Warren’s violent crime, but three men with Detroit criminal histories have been nabbed in two recent city incidents.

Last week, Warren police and the U.S. Marshals Violent Fugitives Task Force arrested a young man with Detroit connections, including felony convictions.

Robert L. Gervin, 23, of Detroit, was charged with felony carrying a concealed weapon at 9:06 p.m. Thursday on Ohio Street Northwest after a traffic stop.

The driver of the 2011 Dodge Ram truck, James W. Chapman, Jr., 24, of Niles was arrested on a warrant for a Trumbull County felony drug-possession charge, driving on a suspended license and failing to use his turn signal. Police also confiscated $2,300 in cash Chapman was carrying.

Chapman was released Friday from the Trumbull County Jail after his arraignment in Warren Municipal Court and posting $3,500 bond.

Police found a pocket-knife in Gervin’s pocket and a semiautomatic handgun between the passenger seat where Gervin was seated and the center console. A judge in Warren Municipal Court set Gervin’s bond at $20,000 after an innocent plea was entered for him.

Gervin was released from the Michigan prison system earlier this year after being sentenced to two years on two felony weapons charges from 2010, according to records from Third Judicial Circuit Court in Detroit.

Gervin also pleaded guilty in 2009 in the same court to carrying concealed weapons and attempted delivery or manufacture of marijuana and was placed on two years’ probation.

Thursday’s traffic stop was similar to one on Nov. 2 on Hazelwood Street in which Derrick Peete, 22, of Webb Street Southeast was stopped by Warren police and officers from the U.S. Marshals task force while driving a 2012 Chevrolet pickup truck at high speed.

Police charged Peete with driving on a suspended license and traffic violations. They found more than $12,000 in cash on him and his passenger, later identified as James Cohen Jr., 23, of Bowling Green, Ohio.

Cohen told police he was Lamar Brown and said he didn’t know his Social Security number, so he was charged with misdemeanor falsification after his real identity was determined. He was released from the Trumbull County Jail on Nov. 5 after posting $2,500 bond.

Peete and Cohen both have criminal records out of Detroit.

Peete was convicted in October 2010 in Third Judicial Circuit Court in Detroit of delivery or manufacture of cocaine and was placed on two years’ probation.

He was charged with unlawful use of a motor vehicle in April 2011, but the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, and he was sentenced to probation, which he violated in December 2011.

Cohen was convicted of carrying concealed weapons in January 2008 in Third Judicial Circuit Court and was placed on two years’ probation.

He was charged with a variety of charges in June 2011, including assault with intent to do great bodily harm, assault with a dangerous weapon, three weapons charges, armed robbery, assault with intent to rob while armed, and malicious destruction of personal property.

He was being held on $600,000 bond, but he was released after the court dropped all charges a couple of weeks later.

In July, four masked men killed Detroit native Delshawn Scott, 36, at the front door of Scott’s Charles Avenue Southeast home. All four men were carrying big guns, a witness said. Police said the killing involved 11 gunshots from an assault rifle.

When asked whether there appeared to be a Detroit connection in some of Warren’s violent crime, Jeff Cole, a detective, internal-affairs officer and spokesman for the Warren Police Department, said Warren has had Detroit connections for many years because a number of Detroit families moved into Warren in the late 1990s.

Many of the individuals committing crimes in Warren now are the offspring of those families, Cole said.

When asked whether police were noticing an unusually high number of young men with criminal records from Detroit showing up in Warren recently, Cole said he hadn’t looked into it.

“It would just be speculation on my part if I would say anything,” Cole said.